ethics

Ethics are a system of moral principles or rules that say what is and is not acceptable.

Generally speaking, ethics refer to the rules or code of conduct that people use to determine when an action is acceptable or not. Often, a person’s ethics are based on the rules of their society, such as laws or religious teachings. A society’s ethics might say that it is wrong to steal from someone else, for example.

You may have your own ethics that are different from the society or community you live in. For example, you may move from a country where owning a gun is legal to one where it is not. In this case, your personal ethics (your belief that owning a gun is okay) may contradict the ethics of the country you now live in.

In philosophy, the word ethics is used to mean the study of what makes a person decide what is right and wrong. Philosophers often use the word morality to mean the same thing.

Outside of philosophy, though, we consider ethics and morals to be two different sets of values. Generally speaking, the difference between the two is that ethics are what a community considers to be right and wrong, and morals are what an individual considers to be good and bad or evil.

The first records of the term ethics come from around 1400. It ultimately comes from the Greek éthikos, which combines the word êthos, meaning “custom,” and –ikos, which forms adjectives. The ethics of many societies are often determined by their customs.

It is understandable if you are still confused by the difference between ethics and morals. The two concepts are often closely interconnected, and ethics are often motivated by the morals that a large number of people have. Many laws, seen as the ethics of society, forbid things that people consider to be a serious violation of morals, such as killing another person.

However, people can have different morals and ethics from each other or their society. For example, the law might allow a farmer to do whatever he wants to the animals he owns. So, a farmer might decide to kill most of his male chicks because he only wants female chickens to lay eggs that he can sell. The farmer is both not violating the ethics of the society he is a part of and he is not violating his own ethics or morals because he personally believes there is nothing wrong about culling male chicks. But many animal rights activists would declare that this practice is morally wrong. You’ll find that people often passionately debate about what should and should not be considered acceptable according to ethics.

Sometimes, the ethics of a profession are in conflict with the ethics of society. Journalists will often protect the identity of their sources even under threat of being sent to prison because they refuse to violate the ethics of journalism.

To help you out, we have a video explaining the difference between ethics and morals:

What’s The Difference Between “Morals” vs. “Ethics”?

The word ethics is often used in instances where a person or even a whole society had an ethical dilemma or violated ethics.

I hope you're all happy after sharing a dead child's photo. A few RTs are probably worth the violation of ethics.

— Mahwash Ajaz 🇵🇰 (@mahwashajaz_) January 9, 2018

It really goes against my ethics to simply 'design' something because that's the way they want it when it's clearly wrong.

— Cerven Cotter (@cervencotter) March 7, 2013

My ethics professor LOVES arguing with us bro

— Christyn (@CogginsChristyn) October 5, 2020

• morals
• morality
• philosophy
• law
• rules
• regulations
• code of ethics

True or False?

Ethics are the rules that define what is right and wrong.